Media Coverage

Older Adults: Here’s What Causes Hunchback – and How to Prevent It

While the postural issue used to be a problem largely reserved for older women, in recent decades, kyphosis has become a significant health problem for older men and women alike, says Dr. Alpesh Patel, director of orthopaedic spine surgery at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “Twenty years ago, when I was in medical school, no one ever thought about it,” he says. Kyphosis now affects between 20 and 40 percent of adults, with both prevalence and severity increasing through the decades, according to a 2015 study published in the scientific journal Neurosurgery. The effects of kyphosis range from decreased mobility to pain and disability to impaired lung function and even increased mortality, according to the study’s findings.

Dementia patients may benefit from music therapy

The new findings highlight the need for more studies involving larger groups of patients, said Dr. Borna Bonakdarpour, an assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern University’s Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease Center. Bonakdarpour believes that music therapy can also be used to improve social interactions. “We are doing some interventions here to see if it can improve interactions between patients and caregivers,” he said. “We have preliminary data that suggests it helps.”

Northwestern Memorial ranked best hospital in Illinois

It’s lucky No. 7 for Northwestern Memorial Hospital: For the seventh year in a row, the Chicago hospital has been named the best in the state by U.S. News & World Report.

Northwestern was also the only Illinois hospital to crack the top 20 in the country, settling into the No. 13 spot for the second year in a row, according to the rankings, which were released at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time Tuesday.

New hepatitis C drugs mean diseased organs can be used for transplants

“I know there are some centers that think it’s the right thing to do” to offer hep C-infected organs, said lead author Josh Levitsky, a Northwestern University liver transplant specialist. “I just would encourage that it be done under research protocols so they can report the data.”

Device Warns Cancer Survivors of Sunburn

It could someday be a really important tool in the fight against skin cancer. Researchers at Northwestern University say they have created a device that could warn you when you’re getting sunburned.

Parents’ spirituality or religion tied to lower suicide risk in kids

The current results were not a surprise to Dr. John Walkup , a professor of psychiatry at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and chair of child and adolescent psychiatry at the Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.

Helping nature: Inducing labor avoids cesarean for some moms

Being induced doesn’t mean moms can’t have “natural childbirth” — they can forgo pain medicine or use a hospital’s homelike birthing center rather than delivering in “an operating room in a sterile suite with a big light over your head,” said the study leader, Dr. William Grobman, an OB-GYN specialist at Northwestern University in Chicago.

Treating Teen Depression Helps Parents’ Mental Health, Too: Study

Study co-author Kelsey R. Howard also noted that the new findings could be useful for healthcare providers, as they could consider assessing a parent’s level of depression when treating their child.” More young people today are reporting persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness and suicidal thoughts,” said Howard. “At the same time, suicide rates have climbed in nearly all U.S. states. This research may help health care providers as we grapple as a nation with how to address these alarming trends.”

Treating Teen Depression Might Improve Mental Health Of Parents, Too

Those findings led another researcher, Kelsey Howard, to wonder whether the opposite is true — if kids get better, do the parents then feel better?

To answer her question, Howard, a graduate student at Northwestern University’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and her adviser, Mark Reinecke, analyzed data from a 2008 study that followed more than 300 teenagers getting treatment for depression over the course of about nine months — either through counseling, medication or both.